


That Blessed Arrangement, That Dream Within a Dream

by waketosleep



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Accidental Marriage, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:03:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how hard you try, pretending you didn't get married while blackout drunk doesn't mean it didn't happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Blessed Arrangement, That Dream Within a Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dira Sudis (dsudis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/gifts).



> Written for YAGKYAS 2013. Thanks to lazulisong for the beta/cheerleading.

**July 2008**

Five years was a long time, but after two beers Brad started to feel like an idiot for having been so tense about seeing Bravo Two again. It was a larger First Recon get-together, but the majority of the OIF platoon had shown up and was clustered loosely around a group of beer coolers, digging toes into the sand. Ray was closer to the fire pit than was probably wise, given how animated a story he was currently telling Garza and Christeson.

Hasser had spent the entirety of Brad's second beer fulfilling their joint social quota by standing silently next to him, but he spoke up so suddenly that Brad actually tensed a little before he could make his brain calm down.

"Holy fuck, look, it's the LT! I mean, the Captain."

Brad blinked up at the loose crowd.

"On your seven," said Hasser helpfully. "And closing."

Brad looked over his shoulder and Former Captain Nathaniel Fick himself appeared like he'd walked straight out of Brad's memories, nodding hello. Brad felt a wide grin crack his face without his permission even as Fick kept going around him, heading for the beer cooler on Brad's other side.

"Well, well, look who it is," said Brad, still totally unable to wipe away the smile.

"Pulled beer watch, Sergeant?" Fick asked, straightening up with a Heineken and pitching the cap back into the cooler before shutting it with his foot.

"We've seen what happens when you leave the supplies unprotected," said Brad.

"In this case, Person steals all the Bud Light Lime," said Hasser.

Fick laughed. "How've you been, Walt?" he asked, shaking his hand.

"Good, sir. Just got married."

"Congratulations. Call me Nate, I quit, remember?"

"Quit and moved back east with the liberal dicksucks, if the knitting circle has it right," said Brad. "What brings you back to Oceanside? Surely not this little soiree?"

"Well-timed work conference. It finished yesterday; I fly out tomorrow night."

"Plenty of time to get shitty," announced Ray as he joined the conversation without any invitation. "Look, apparently Encino Man is here and starting a football game. I personally opted out of playing homoerotic grab-ass with sports equipment when I left the Corps, so you three should join me, Garza, Lilley, Christeson, and I don't know who the fuck else and go to a bar instead. Come on! Mom and Dad are back together, Walt and I both got day passes from the wives. It'll be like we're all a big happy family again! Except we'll all be drunk and Trombley's not here to sit in a dark corner caressing his weapon."

"You used to love homoerotic grab-ass, Ray," Brad cooed over the top of his beer.

"Only when Rudy's there, you know that, Brad." Ray looked right at Fick. "What do you say, Captain? Are you ready to get some with your former lackeys?"

"All right. I'm sure as fuck not playing football with Encino Man," said Fick, which surprised the shit out of Brad. And Ray too, apparently, because he nearly choked on the beer he was chugging and spat it out on the sand, wiping spittle off of his chin.

"Leaving the Corps did you good, man," Ray gasped out.

***

Brad's bed was warmer than usual. He wondered if this had to do with why he felt so absolutely shitty, and then realized that no, that was the hangover.

"Why," he more or less groaned out as he rolled onto his back.

It had been rhetorical, so the incoherently grunted response from his left almost gave him a heart attack. He opened his eyes--the sunlight coming through the blinds hurt, but he wasn't going to puke--and looked over in a cold sweat, and there was a big, masculine hand rubbing at a face topped with short, blond-brown hair.

Okay, so Nate had crashed at Brad's house and had for some reason not taken the couch. Maybe Brad had been a more hospitable drunk than usual. He let himself believe this with all of his heart for five seconds until he accepted that he was completely naked under the covers and that didn't sound like his kind of hospitality.

Nate stopped pinching the bridge of his nose and peeked his eyes open, squinting right at Brad. Then he shut his eyes, relaxed back into his pillow, and opened them again to look at the ceiling.

"I'm in your bed," he said.

"Once a Recon Marine," Brad couldn't help snarking back.

Nate looked like he had a response to that, but he bit it back. Then he froze. "I don't know how to ask this without it sounding really weird," he said slowly.

Brad sighed through his nose. "Are you naked too?"

"Oh, Jesus Christ fuck." Nate sat bolt upright and then reflexively tugged the sheets up tight around his waist. "What the fuck, I can't--the last thing I remember is tequila shots. I remember three tequila shots."

Brad thought back. "I think there were at least five."

"Do you think we actually slept together?"

Brad shrugged.

Nate dug a hand through his hair. His skin looked gold in the morning sun and Brad was way too hungover to deal with any of this. "Do you think anyone else knows this happened? That I apparently came home with you?"

Brad shrugged again. His memory wasn't telling any stories. "I need coffee." He slid to the edge of the bed and leaned over to grab his jeans off of the floor. "You still take yours black?"

"Why are you so calm about this? You're the one who has something to lose, here!"

"I'm calm because I haven't had any coffee yet and I don't think there's anything to--" There was a piece of paper lying on the floor. Brad didn't leave pieces of paper lying on the floor. The piece of paper looked like heavy bond with a fancy border on it.

"Brad?" Nate said, somewhere faintly in the background. Brad dropped his jeans on his lap and bent to grab the corner of the paper. It said 'License and Certificate of Marriage' at the top and there was his name and there was Nate's name, both handwritten, and Brad dropped it on top of the covers. There was something in the pocket of his jeans, and he fished that out and yanked them on as Nate looked at the paper.

"What the fuck is this? Is this real?"

"Apparently we got married," Brad said to the plastic gumball machine ring lying in his palm. It was blue.

"How can this possibly have happened?"

"It was probably Ray's fault." Brad set the toy ring on his nightstand, did up his jeans and stood up. "I'm going to make that coffee. Shower's through there."

***

Around the second pot of coffee, after Brad had downed greasy eggs and Nate had grimaced and passed on eating, the hangover had started to recede and reality was rushing in to take its place. The marriage license sat damningly on the kitchen table, slightly creased.

"We probably took a cab back here," Brad said, reaching for the coffee pot for a refill.

"I think I can remember the stupid rings," Nate said suddenly. "I have no idea what happened to mine, but I put yours on your pinkie because that was the only finger it fit on."

Brad looked down at his bare hand unwillingly.

"I thought weddings needed witnesses. There aren't any witness signatures on that thing," Nate went on.

"It's a confidential license; they don't need them. My parents have one," he elaborated off Nate's look. "The only copies of this thing in existence are this one, and the log with the guy who wrote it." He pointed at the notary's scribble.

"So how do we get it annulled?"

Brad dug his iPhone out and googled. "I don't suppose you're mentally unsound," he said after a few moments of unhappy reading.

"No more than I was yesterday."

"We have to get a divorce." He slid the phone across the table.

Nate snatched it up and scrolled through it. "We can get a 'summary dissolution'."

"We can't. I own this house. You're now entitled to half of it." He slurped his coffee. It was half Nate's coffee, now.

"Fucking headache is coming back," Nate muttered, probably to himself. Louder, he said, "So, we got married but nobody knows about it but us and the notary, probably. And it's a secret."

"Correct."

"But now we have to get a divorce. And that'll require a judge and a lawyer."

Brad nodded.

"What if we just burn this thing?"

Brad looked at it. "Still married."

"I don't even know how the fuck we managed this while blackout drunk."

Brad reached across the table and stole his phone back out of Nate's hands to text Ray with one thumb. His phone buzzed right after he put it back down, so Ray must have been semi-coherent, too. Either that or the text was just a keysmash with 'fuck' somewhere in it.

_so hungoverrrrrrt notequila agin ever great nite tho_

Better than Brad had been expecting to see, but not informative enough for his purposes.

_You illiterate fuck, take a Tylenol. How much do you remember?_

His phone buzzed again. _I remember tequila_

Brad looked back up across the table at Nate, who was playing with the handle of his coffee mug and chewing his lip. "I'm willing to bet this was still Ray's fault, but I don't think he remembers anything," he said, and drank more of his coffee.

"What about the other six people we were drinking with?" Nate pointed out.

Nate had been out of the Corps too long. Brad sat back in his chair. "It's almost noon. If any of them knew, my landline would have been ringing with sarcastic congratulations from the entire Marine phone tree since five."

The coffee mug banged down on the table loudly enough that Brad went tense. Nate shoved himself out of his chair. "I need to get out of here. I have a plane to catch."

"What do you want to do about this?" Brad called after him.

"Ignoring it seems to be the best plan, so let's do that," said Nate, who Brad found at the front door shoving his shoes on. "You don't have to tell if nobody knows to ask."

"Sorry," said Brad, for a lack of anything else to say.

"Me too," said Nate, and then he left.

Brad went to make the bed later, and found a yellow plastic ring down under the sheets. He left it beside the blue one.

***

**November 2008**

Brad wondered if he was the only person voting 'yes' to Proposition 8 in the hopes that it would annul his own marriage. When it passed, he thought about calling Nate but didn't.

Then, later, when internet research revealed that he was still married anyway, he thought about calling Nate again. He still didn't.

***

**May 2010**

Spending time with Ray was always a double-edged sword: Brad would probably never get tired of talking about shit with him and laughing at Ray's highly unique point of view, but on the other hand, every interaction was fraught with retardation. They still went out to the bar when Ray came to San Diego for a conference, and Brad just hoped he wouldn't wake up naked with _him_ this time.

The ritual catch-up with all their mutual friends took a while. Brad and Wright had been in touch again, meanwhile Ray and Poke had met up at somebody's wedding in Tennessee. "The scuttlebutt has it that Nate's nesting in DC," said Ray. "Wynn went out to teach at Quantico and they've been socializing."

"Oh? And how is the esteemed Captain Fick?" Brad asked, with an attempt at zero inflection.

"Like I said, nesting." Ray turned a faintly unsettling look on him. "Wynn says she's pretty hot. Seems like it's serious."

"Good for him." Brad took a long drink of his beer.

"Think we'll be invited to the wedding?" Ray asked, grinning but still watching him.

You don't invite your ex to weddings unless you're an asshole, Brad reasoned to himself, but for Ray's benefit he shrugged. "If he's smart, it won't be open bar."

He should have waited till morning and sobriety, but when Brad got in that night, he sent a text to what he hoped was still Nate's number.

 _Hearing that maybe you might prefer to be legally single. Just let me know, I can find someone discreet._ He certainly hoped Nate wouldn't choose martyrdom for the sake of Brad's career.

He never got an answer, though. Maybe it wasn't the right number anymore. But he also didn't hear any more about Nate settling down, and he was listening for it now.

***

**August 2011**

When Rudy finally admitted that he was, indeed, fucking gay and married Pappy, they apparently invited most of the Reconnaissance community to the wedding, which was in fucking Iowa, of all the places to have a gay destination wedding. Brad met Ray, Hasser, Garza and Evan Wright outside the church with twenty minutes to spare before the ceremony.

"Which groom's side do you think we're sitting on?" Ray asked in lieu of a hello.

"Oh, look," said Hasser. "There's my wife." And he promptly wandered off. Garza laughed.

"Did I say something?" said Ray.

"Where's _your_ far better half, Ray?" Brad looked around as obviously as he could. "She didn't finally come to her senses and dump your hick ass, did she?"

Ray gave him the finger. "She stayed home with the dogs. She's already done two Recon weddings, not including, you know, ours, so I gave her a get out of jail free card this time."

"The dogs are probably better company," said Wright.

"Thanks, Reporter. You know, I missed you and your misguided liberal bullshit. I really did," said Ray.

Wright clapped him on the shoulder.

"I'm going inside before this gets any sappier," said Brad.

"Save me a seat, homes!"

No fucking way in hell was Brad sitting next to Ray for Rudy's wedding ceremony. He hadn't had anything to drink yet, for starters.

And he was forever going to deny that the first thing he saw when he walked inside the church was Nate, like he had some kind of homing beacon or something. He was sitting near the back, on what appeared to be Pappy's side. Brad tore his gaze away and marched up the aisle until he found an empty space at the end of a row right beside Poke and his wife.

"Is this seat taken?" he asked smoothly as he leaned over the single empty chair.

Poke startled a little. "No, dog, s'all yours. You came stag?"

Brad sat down, rearranging his tie and jacket. "Nominally. Ray's pursuing me like a little, yappy dog."

"He can go yap somewhere else till the reception, then," said Gina, who Brad had always liked.

"At least our man Brad can be drunk before his leg starts getting humped," said Poke with a little sideways grin. Gina backhanded him lightly on the arm.

"Agreed," said Brad, settling down to wait for the festivities to begin. He tried to tell himself he did not, in fact, possess a homing beacon that could detect Nate staring at him from his blind spot, and that the itchy feeling on his neck was all in his head. He was probably correct.

***

They were seated _right next to each other_ in the reception arrangements. Brad stared at his little namecard and Nate's little namecard, sitting innocuously behind their plates. Not that they absolutely had to sit in those particular seats at the table, but a quick glance around the rest of the table told him he'd be shuffling aside couples if he started fucking with the dynamics, and one of those couples--Wright and his girlfriend--was already seated. Brad sighed to himself and pulled out his chair.

Nate was almost right behind him.

"Brad," he greeted as the chair to Brad's left moved back. He smiled blandly as he sat down. "I see we're both filling out a table tonight."

"Neither one of you brought a date?" Wright asked a little incredulously. "Oh, this is Sam, I don't think any of you have actually met." Wright's girlfriend, who Brad recognized from her picture, had a much warmer smile in person.

"Nice to finally meet you," Sam enthused at them both.

"We heard so much about you in Iraq, it's good to put a face to the name," said Nate without a trace of irony. Brad bit the inside of his cheek, shook her hand over the wineglasses, and idly wondered if Nate had seen the picture in its travels.

"So," said Wright after a moment. "Any exciting news for either of you in the last few years?"

Brad pointedly did not look over at Nate and so he couldn't say whether Nate was pointedly not looking back. "I've had an offer to go to Fort Benning," he volunteered, playing with the hem of his folded napkin.

Nate went tense with surprise. Brad kept playing with his napkin.

"Oh? To do what?" Wright asked.

"Teaching post at jump school."

"You going to accept?" Wright grinned. "Trade coasts?"

Brad shrugged and gave into the urge to glance to his left. Nate was sitting back in his chair, watching him. "I'm considering it. Getting a little long in the tooth for missions."

"Might as well start taking it easy and jump out of planes all day instead," said Sam nonchalantly, and they all laughed politely as Hasser and his wife took the other two seats.

"Oh, we got the party table I see," said Hasser's wife as she arranged herself in her chair.

"At least until Chaffin digs out his flask," said Hasser, nodding at everybody.

Brad settled back in his seat, withdrew mentally from the small talk, and wondered how fast the dry chicken would start arriving.

***

Dinner ended, the table broke up, Brad stayed stationary while things shuffled around for the dancing and Ray came by three separate times to spike his drink from his own flask and wander off into the crowd again. He continued to sit and drink idly while Pappy and Rudy had their first dance, and then smiled to himself as the dance floor filled up with Marines holding each other tenderly (or in the case of Jacks and Chaffin, actually doing what looked like a salsa, with Chaffin leading and staggering under the weight of Jacks draping himself lasciviously over him). Ray and Hasser twirled by with little twiddly waves at Brad and kisses blown at Pappy and Rudy, who were almost crying with laughter into each others' shoulders in the middle of the dance floor. It looked like Ray had a flower from one of the centrepieces in his teeth.

"You're not joining in whatever this is?" came a voice from behind Brad; thankfully he was too buzzed to startle at the sound.

"Not much of a dancer," he said as Nate dropped back into his chair. His tie was loosened a little and his drink smelled like it could clear up an infection. "Did you come packing, too?"

Nate shook his head. "Chaffin," he said, waving vaguely. "And Christeson. And Ray, twice." He paused. "I think they're trying to get me loaded."

"You present a compelling target, sir."

"You are so far past calling me 'sir'," Nate shot back, and then Brad watched him realize what he'd just said. "I mean. Well."

Brad decided to let him off the hook. "You're not wrong."

Nate nodded, and then leaned over to pour some of his swill into Brad's glass. "Till Ray's done tangoing and comes back. Cash bar, after all."

"That never stopped a Marine." Brad drank his rubbing alcohol obediently all the same.

***

He'd just done three Jaegerbombs with Pappy, Rudy and Jacks and Brad could not remember the last time he'd been this drunk. Nate was there again. Had Nate been there for the Jaegerbombs?

"Not bad for a wedding," Brad managed.

"You picture your wedding like this?"

"What?"

Nate's tie was completely gone by now. He waved at the room, the random couples dancing and the people drinking and laughing. Rudy was feeding Pappy cake off of a fork. "This. Weren't you gonna get married once? Was it this kind of thing?"

Brad thought, all the way back to his ex-fiancee. "If she wanted it, sure."

Nate was staring at him. "You never pictured anything for a wedding at all?"

"Did you?"

Nate stared back a moment longer, then cased the room and went back to staring into Brad's eyes some more. "Which hotel are you at?" he asked suddenly.

"The one they blocked off." Brad couldn't remember which one it was.

"Me too." Nate stood up. "Let's share a cab."

Brad hesitated, but what was he going to stay here and do, drink until he'd totally fucked his liver? He used the table to lever himself to his feet smoothly. "Should we--"

"Just come on."

***

He didn't even know whose floor they were going to; maybe Nate's. All he knew was they'd made it five seconds into the elevator ride before they were against the mirrored wall and rolling into the corner, the handrail digging into Brad's thigh and Nate's fingers digging into his lower back. Brad's hand fit perfectly under the line of Nate's jaw; his thumb slid up behind the reddening, hot shell of Nate's ear and his fingertips curved over the back of his head like he was custom-made for holding Nate still and tilting him back to kiss. Nate's mouth tasted like Red Bull but Brad was drunk enough not to mind. They nearly missed the elevator door opening on whatever floor they finally staggered off on. Brad decided to let Nate handle the logistics of getting them out of the hallway, and focused instead on seeing how long he could kiss without breathing.

Nate had to shove him back into the wall to actually have room to open his door.

"What the fuck are we doing right now?" Brad blurted out when he'd caught his breath enough to clear his head.

The hotel room door clicked open and Nate braced it with his foot. "Why? Worried we're gonna wake up married to each other or something?"

Brad had an answer to that, he really did, but Nate was pulling him inside the room by the lapel of his only good jacket and he didn't want to rip it.

***

Morning came with less of a shock this time, because Brad was expecting it. Also, because he woke up to the sound of the shower running. He stretched out in bed as it shut off and Nate shortly came out, wearing a towel and heading for his bag.

"Should we get that divorce now?" Brad asked, watching him.

Nate froze partway through straightening up with his jeans in hand. "Did you want to go through all that?"

Brad switched to staring up at the popcorn ceiling. "They already repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell. If it gets out, nobody can do anything about it." All the excuses are gone now, he didn't say.

There was a rustle of clothing; Brad kept studying the texture of the ceiling rather than look at Nate's expression.

"I don't really have the time to fuck around with lawyers and court and going to San Diego County right now," was what Nate finally said. "Unless you've got pressing reasons to do it, in which case I can find the time."

"Nah," said Brad. "There's no rush."

"All right, then." Nate paused. "I promised to go meet someone. I'm not checking out yet, so take your time."

"Sure." There was a very, very faint stain on the ceiling over near the bathroom wall. Water damage from upstairs? "Hey," he said when the door started to open.

"Yeah?"

"Do you still have the same phone number?"

"Never changed it," said Nate. "Goodbye, Brad."

The door clicked shut quietly.

***

**July 2013**

The package delivery notice stuck to Brad's front door when he came home from work put him on edge; he hadn't ordered anything. He hated surprises. His birthday wasn't for another two months and his parents knew better than to buy him anything for it at this point.

It turned out to be postmarked from Missouri, at which point he almost didn't even open it, but after the box sat on the kitchen table for a day, he gave into his curiosity and grabbed a knife to cut the tape open.

The box contained a wooden dildo (hand-carved, according to the little tag it came with) and a card that said, ' _Apparently the fifth anniversary gift is supposed to be wood. Mazel tov._ '

Ray answered his phone on the third ring. " _Yello._ "

"What the fuck did you send me?"

" _Hi, Brad! Yeah, you can get anything on Amazon these days. Look, I hope you like it, but I don't want to hear how much, okay? Just think fondly of me._ "

The phone made a creaking sound in Brad's grip. "Ray, I require a fucking explanation immediately."

" _I'm your best friend, Brad. If I don't acknowledge the fifth anniversary of your sacred union, I'm not doing my job._ "

"This isn't remotely funny."

The other end of the line went quieter, like Ray had just gone somewhere more private. " _That wasn't really the goal. The goal was for you to call me all pissed off and demanding an explanation, so mission accomplished. Now I can stage my intervention._ "

"How long have you fucking known about this?"

" _As if I wasn't totally there. I just didn't watch the ceremony or sign the thing. Figured you'd freak out I couldn't keep a secret._ "

"You can't keep a secret."

" _I kept this one for five years, homes. You're welcome. I'm only ninety-five percent sure you're still married, though, so don't worry, I didn't mail Nate his matching gift yet. You just say the word, though, because I don't want him to get jealous thinking I love you better, and I understand it takes a lot of trust to share toys safely._ "

"It's just a piece of paper," Brad hissed.

" _I knew it. Fucking five years you had to change your minds and instead you both repress and deny. You're obviously made for each other. I was hoping you'd gotten your shit together after you hooked up at Pappy and Rudy's wedding._ "

Brad was going to break his phone and it was going to be Ray's fault. "How did you--"

" _You left together and he met me and Reporter for brunch the next day with a hickey on his neck. Look, if you haven't gotten divorced after five years, can you both please just man up and live happily ever after? That's all I want._ "

There was a muffled voice in the background of the call.

" _What?_ " Ray said to someone else. " _Oh, Trina agrees with me that you're both retarded._ "

"So you can't keep a secret after all," said Brad, pinching away a headache forming between his eyes.

" _Not from her. But if you're going to leave with Nate from a Recon wedding where you both showed up stag and spent the entire night glued to each other's sides, I don't think you can really talk about keeping secrets. All right, I gotta stop by the post office before work tomorrow, so I'm going to let you go think about your life choices and enjoy my thoughtful present, homes. Oh, and I know a guy at Quantico if you're done pining away in Georgia._ "

The line went dead. Brad peered into the box again, bundled the whole thing into the trash outside, and went into his office to dig out the fire-safe box in the closet. The marriage license sat underneath his will, passport, birth certificate, deed, and two plastic rings. Even after five years, it still had a slight crinkle to it from being stepped on or whatever had happened that night, and he smoothed it out as best he could on the hardwood floor.

Nate's number was still in his phone. It was too late to be calling, but at least he was sober. Brad hit the 'call' button and listened to it ring. The blue ring really did only fit on his pinkie.

 

THE END


End file.
